Kelly Bensimon was one of the first guests to arrive at last night’s reception for Gwen Stefani’s L.A.M.B. show at Milk’s Montauk Surf Lodge pop-up, where she did some impromptu dancing (or well, shuffling, since she was wearing Hunter boots) in the near-empty room. Why was she there when her Playboy cover was hitting newsstands the next day — shouldn’t she be preparing in some way for the world to see, er, everything? “I’m not nervous, I’m really excited,” she said. “It’s very humbling to be naked, because like, that’s you. It’s very raw.” Does she find herself in good company in this issue, which also features John Mayer? “It’s all about his sex scandals! I was like, whoa!”
Bensimon’s two daughters and her parents are hiding out on a ski trip in Aspen, not that they don’t know plenty about the nude photos already. “[My daughters] were there when we filmed it — they came to the studio with Gilles” — Bensimon, her ex-husband, who shot the spread. “We ate breakfast together, we talked about it, and you know, they understand that I’m 41 years old. I’ve been maintaining this for a long time. It’s not like, I woke up one day and I looked like this. I’ve worked really, really hard to be in good shape all my life, and I want my kids to have strong values in terms of taking care of their bodies. And their brains.” To prepare for the shoot, Kelly claims she tried to fill out a bit. “I ate a lot of chicken wings and I drank a lot of beer. I was really skinny before because I was riding in the Hampton Classic and I was working out a lot, so I wanted people to see the real me, like curvaceous, not some stick figure that looks really worked-out.”
